The many blessings which have flowed from this act of consecration by the Scottish Bishops have been recognized and recounted again and again, and it is not my purpose to dwell on them now; but rather to speak of that part of the life of Seabury which covers the exercise of his Episcopal office.
But before I proceed to do this, let me step back for a few moments under the arches of history, and make two or three references to show that our Church in America is indebted to Scotland, and especially to Aberdeen, for other favors besides the gift of Episcopacy. You gave us men who were great historic pioneers in our ecclesiastical existence. The Venerable Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts was chartered in 1701, and for three-quarters of a century its chief field of labor was in New England. This fact may be ignored, but it forms an important and salient feature in its early history; and what is remarkable, the very first missionary sent out by the Society to the American colonies was a native of Aberdeen, George Keith, a school companion of the celebrated Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, whom he mentions in his "History of his own Time." And then that wonderfully numerous tribe or family, which always has its representatives in every Christian country of the wide world, furnished us William Smith, born on the banks of the river Dee, not far from this city, a man with glaring imperfections of character, but a scholar and a divine, who knelt side by side with Seabury in the chapel of Fulham Palace when they were admitted to Holy Orders, and who subsequently became a conspicuous actor in the organization and establishment of our American Church, having been the first President of the House of Deputies, and having guided that body to concurrence with the House of Bishops in revising the Book of Common Prayer and accepting the Scotch Communion-office. We might not have had this office in its present shape had he not risen to favor its adoption when signs of dissatisfaction and a disposition to reject it appeared.
Still again we are indebted to another native of Aberdeenshire, known in our history as William Smith the younger, who went to America soon after the acknowledgment of American Independence, being in Holy Orders which he received in Scotland, and, having served the Church for a time in other States of our Republic, appeared in Connecticut, and held important educational and parochial positions in that diocese. The office for the Institution or Induction of Ministers into parishes or churches, set forth in our Book of Common Prayer, was compiled by him. He was a man of much learning, ardent temperament, and quick impulses. He possessed singular versatility of talents, was a composer of church music, and a constructor of church organs. He was a pioneer in our country in chanting, and did us good service in overcoming or diminishing the popular love for a Puritan style of metrical psalm-singing.
Men of this stamp went to America when our Church was in, or passing through, a broken and disordered condition, and we have reason to be thankful to them for the aid they rendered us when we were sorely in need. I believe we are thankful. I believe there is a growing interest among our people in the Scottish Church, an increasing desire that Churches of the one faith— English, Scotch, Irish, and American—should have a closer bond of fellowship, and rejoice more heartily in each other's prosperity. It is a good thing that we have come together on this centennial occasion and mingled our congratulations. As we have met here face to face, we have learned to respect ourselves more, and, I hope, to love and respect each other more.
But let me leave these references, and draw your thoughts around Seabury in his Episcopal character. On the morning of a bleak November Sunday in 1784 we enter an "upper room" in Longacre, built and fitted for Divine worship, and find there three of the four bishops then administering the dioceses of the Scottish Church; and after prayers and a suitable sermon, they proceed to consecrate this self-sacrificing servant of God to the Apostolic office. Though the penal laws enacted against the clergy of the Scottish Church had not yet been repealed, their edge had worn away, or they had ceased altogether to be enforced, so that the service was in no manner secret. It was witnessed by a number of respectable clergymen, and a large body of laity, "on which occasion all testified great satisfaction." As the letter of Consecration reads: Presentibus tam e Clero quam e Populo Testibus idoneis. The occasion was a memorable and particularly solemn one. Seabury himself said of it: "It was the most solemn day of all my life—God grant I may never forget it."
He preached in the afternoon of the day of his consecration, and his earnestness and manner of address, accompanied with gesticulations, which appear not to have been common in Scotland at that period, made a favorable impression. On his return to London, he stopped at Edinburgh, where his friend and fellow- sufferer in the trials of the American Revolution, Dr. Myles Cooper, with others, welcomed him, and gave him hearty congratulations on the accomplishment of his mission. From this city, he wrote to the Rev. Jonathan Boucher, vicar of Epsom in Surrey, who had interested himself in his application, to acquaint him, as he had promised to do, with the success of his visit to Scotland. "The Church in Connecticut," said he, "has only done her duty in endeavoring to obtain the Episcopacy for herself, and I have only done my duty in carrying her endeavors into execution. Political reasons prevented her application from being complied with in England. It was natural in the next instance to apply to Scotland, whose Episcopacy, though now under a cloud, is the very same in every ecclesiastical sense with the English."
He had grown up and lived hitherto under the influence of the highest veneration for the Church of England, and his attachment to her was still strong, notwithstanding he considered it bad policy that his application for consecration had been rejected by the English Bishops. He began to fear, however, that the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel might cease to aid him, which would be a result to be deplored for other than pecuniary reasons. "Should the Society itself," said he, "be obliged to take such a step, though I shall be sorry for it and hurt by it, I shall not be dejected. If my father and mother forsake me, if the governors of the Church and the Society discard me, I shall still be that humble pensioner of Divine Providence which I have been through my whole life. God, I trust, will take me up, continue His goodness to me, and bless my endeavors to serve the cause of His infant Church in Connecticut. I trust that it is not the loss of 50 pounds per annum that I dread—though that is an object of some importance to a man who has nothing—but the consequences that must ensue, the total alienation of regard and affection."
His path was not yet cleared of trials and perplexities, for on reaching London he found those high in authority so dissatisfied with the step he had taken that they pronounced it precipitate. "Since my return from Scotland," said he in his first pastoral letter to the clergy of Connecticut, "I have seen none of the bishops, but I have been informed that the step I have taken has displeased the two Archbishops, and it is now a matter of doubt whether I shall be continued on the Society's list. The day before I set out on my northern journey I had an interview with each of the Archbishops, when my design was avowed, so that the measure was known, though it has made no noise. My own poverty is one of the greatest discouragements I have. Two years' absence from my family, and expensive residence here, have more than expended all I had. But in so good a cause, and of such magnitude, something must be risked by somebody. To my lot it has fallen; I have done it cheerfully, and despair not of a happy issue."
All his apprehensions in regard to aid were realized, though he wrote a most admirable letter to the Venerable Society giving a concise history of his mission to England, and making a pathetic appeal for future remembrance and consideration. After a delay of two months, it was acknowledged by the Secretary without recognizing his official character, being addressed "To the Rev. Dr. Seabury, New London, Connecticut." He was told that his case was comprehended under the general rule, that the charter would not allow the Society to "employ any missionaries except in the plantations, colonies, and factories belonging to the Kingdom of Great Britain."
Bishop Seabury received from the British Government 50 pounds per annum half-pay as a chaplain in the King's American regiment during the War of the Revolution; and a few of his fast friends in England— among them Dr. Horne, then Dean of Canterbury, Rev. Jonathan Boucher, and William Stevens, Esq.—associated themselves together and engaged to send him annually 50 pounds from the date of his arrival in Connecticut. This engagement was faithfully kept to the day of his death, and was an equivalent for the stipend which had been withdrawn by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.